by Josep Pla
“Do you think it will be northerly?”
“A mistral! I almost guarantee you that…Sweet dreams!”
“Good night.”
In the course of our relationship, many things changed. The only thing that didn’t was the level of formality in our conversations. He was always very deferential and I was ever polite, as on the first day we met.
The next morning, when I came down to the dining room, which was always so empty, I saw another place laid on the table next to the one where I usually sat. As the mail coach had just come, I imagined it must be a traveling salesman. I’d not yet started on the anchovies – which, in Cadaqués, soaked in local olive oil, are a tasty starter – when a man appeared in the doorway; he was stout and swarthy and walked slowly over to his table. Intuitively, I supposed it was Fatty Verdera. And in effect, it was. His first request to the waitress was phrased in such a strong Majorcan accent I had no doubt who he was. After lunch the hotel owner confirmed that it was so. Even if I’d tried hard not to, I couldn’t have stopped thinking about Bread and Grapes. His first prediction had been fully realized.
Initially I might have been put off track because I didn’t find Fatty Verdera to be as fat as his nickname suggested. He was on the fat side, but his height compensated his plumpness. He was a tall, large man. He was swarthy, not in a firm or glowing way but in sickly, off-color fashion.
I saw him so close up and had so little to do – apart, that is, from eating lunch – that I scrutinized him for a while. His face was round, chubby and coarse and had no sharp lines: a face made up of small, insubstantial protuberances and drooping flesh. He looked to be fifty-five, though he was probably younger. His hair was scant and graying and his white eyes bulged above huge purple bags; his forehead was broad, his nose normal, his mouth fleshy, his ears large and the back of his neck short and flabby. Everything else was in proportion to his height: broad shoulders, a serious potbelly, thick legs and sizable feet. He was clean shaven and wore a light-colored suit that hung on him: it was ready-made.
Fatty Verdera picked at his food, sipped his wine quickly – he’d ordered a bottle of the good stuff – and seemed to look at the world aimlessly; his whole body reacted listlessly. When he spoke to the waitress, he did so in the outwardly friendly tone employed by people from those islands. His hands seemed to move stiffly, even robotically. His manner seemed to communicate displeasure toward others, if not toward himself. It was a manner that reminded me of recalcitrant drunkards I have known – people whose reactions seem to have shut down, as if the links between the different parts of their organism had been severed. I remembered Bread and Grapes telling me that Fatty Verdera was a drunkard. Possibly. At any rate, a chronic drunkard, one of those who are in their element with the tiniest drop of alcohol. They usually strive to avoid seeming what they are, try to walk straight-backed, but you immediately see the truth of the situation.
Fatty Verdera’s lunch was a long-winded affair, not because of an abundance of victuals, but because he chewed everything so painstakingly. He looked exhausted when he’d finished his meal. However, the proprietor brought him a good filter coffee and placed a bottle of cognac on the table, and Senyor Verdera now seemed to wake up to the outside world. He jollied up slightly.
He gave the impression of a man who felt under the weather. He must have been toping for years. He was one of those people nobody has ever seen in a noisy, grotesque alcoholic delirium, but who, by drinking on a small scale every day, manages to achieve a state of befuddled unawareness. Drop by drop the skin fills. Their organism slowly adapts to their sad passion, and a time comes when everything they do, say and vaguely think must be seen through their obsessive, febrile, alcoholic habit. A time comes when everything annoys them, when they find reality to be most unpleasant and they disengage completely. Though they feel compelled to show an interest, in truth, they couldn’t care a damn. Nothing impinges on them. They turn into a kind of bit actor in everyday life; their playacting becomes their defense wall, behind which they pursue their puny lives. I thought Bread and Grapes’s observation that Fatty Verdera wasn’t an enemy most apt. That fellow would have agreed with anyone, just as he would have disavowed anything. His indifference was absolute. However, that kind of passive, merely contemplative man usually has a predator by his side bending him to his will, simply because a manipulator running the show serves as an easy solution. People like Fatty Verdera find the world so complex and entangled they don’t dare take individual initiatives. They need someone else to take the lead…
I tried to pass the time looking at the small ads in the newspaper that had just arrived. After his second coffee, in which he poured an amazing amount of cognac, I decided he would fall asleep. His head slumped onto his right shoulder and his eyes shut for a second.
I could perfectly imagine his state of mind at that point. He’d arrived in an exhausted state after his comings and goings over the last few days. The first thing he’d done after alighting from the bus had been to knock back two or three vermouths in the Casino. Then, during lunch, he’d downed a bottle of wine, followed by three coffees mixed with half a bottle of cognac. It was a copious intake. It’s likely that if he’d not been by himself and so absorbed in dubious thoughts, he wouldn’t have raised the bar so high. However, this was the outcome. The most obvious thing you could anticipate was that he’d fall asleep at that same table. But all of a sudden, his whole body shuddered and he got up gingerly. Now on his feet, he glanced at his watch, after rummaging in his pocket for a moment. (I suspect he had no clear idea of the time indicated by its hands.) He scornfully returned his watch to its place. He then grasped the handle of the plain, black leather briefcase he’d left on an adjacent chair. The briefcase was bulky and must have contained his crumpled pajamas and most private needs. Then, visibly tottering – despite every effort to proceed with a degree of dignity – he reached the dining-room door. The tavern keeper was on the doorstep.
“So you’ve finished lunch?” he asked, displaying his uneven teeth.
“Yes, senyor, and it was a fine one.”
“Will you be here for dinner?”
“No, senyor. That…won’t be possible! I’ll be back for lunch tomorrow. Good afternoon!”
“Good afternoon!”
When I reached the front door of the tavern I saw Senyor Verdera going up the Sa Felipa side street. He walked rather hunched down on rocky legs. At one stage he steadied himself against a wall. Then he disappeared.
* * *
—
I had letters to reply to, and once I’d done that, I decided to stroll to El Jonquet, as I did almost daily. After passing the Creus bend and walking the top part of the path, I saw the southwesterly had abated. The sea, which I could see beyond the roofs and walls of Cadaqués, was unpleasantly choppy as it usually was after the southerly wind dies down. As I walked, I stumbled over stones and leaves from the olive groves. I found everything quite hard and jagged. The weather was dry. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The procession of clouds over the sea had come to a halt, and the horizon was clear and bright. To the north, over Bufadors, to be exact, the sky was an icy, metallic blue. It was a pleasure to walk. The air was seamless and light. My heart and mind seemed rejuvenated. The mistral, still far away, was within view.
Before I reached the En Morell stockyard, Bread and Grapes appeared from behind the wall of an olive grove. He seemed very pleased with himself. It was the first time I’d seen him laugh so gleefully.
“So he’s come?” he asked, rather jokily.
“Yes, senyor! Your prophecy came true. You’re an ace, Bread and Grapes!”
“And hey…” he responded immediately, clearly anxious: “Did he come by himself? Did you see anyone else?”
“I couldn’t tell you for sure. He spoke to nobody in the tavern while he was eating lunch. But I’ve no idea whether he saw anyone before lunch.”
�
�That bright spark from Port de Llançà always makes me nervous…” he added, his face clouding. “He’s always capable of appearing from nowhere…We’ll see soon enough! Meanwhile, Fatty Verdera is here…Did he drink a skinful in the tavern?”
“I imagine he drank as he usually does. You know him. On the other hand, you must have seen him walk by not long ago.”
“He was a couple of yards away, but he didn’t see me. I thought he looked well plastered. He’s a man that likes his drink! Now he’s gone to sleep it off on the sloop, till tomorrow morning. He doesn’t usually eat supper, and if he does, never very much.”
“So you think Senyor Verdera is in El Jonquet?”
“I’m sure he is. And he’ll have gone to bed hours ago. If you go, you’ll spot something new.”
“I was intending to spend a while there…”
“That’s up to you. Let’s meet up when you come back. I’ll be waiting. I’d ask only one thing. See if anyone else is in El Jonquet apart from Fatty Verdera. You can tell just by looking at the footprints on the beach. Fatty leaves very deep prints. The fellow from Llançà is skinny. On the other hand, if Tanau is on the sloop, he’ll show signs of life. He’ll cook something or other to eat on deck…you get me?”
“I get you perfectly…”
Bread and Grapes disappeared into the olive grove and I slowly resumed my walk. When I reached the barren waste of S’Alqueria, I felt the mistral’s first faint gusts. A yellow and black streak of cloud scudded across the sky over Puig Alt, almost always a symptom of the wind’s presence. The bluish black of the sky had turned glassy.
It was deafeningly still in the cove. The rowboat had gone from the beach and was tied to the sloop’s stern. There were no signs of movement on the sloop. The last downpours had transformed the sandy beach into a uniform, compacted mass, where footprints were clearly visible. When I examined them – something I did after lingering in the olive grove – I decided they were all made by the same feet: rather fat feet. Fatty Verdera’s. Then again, I felt it was almost impossible that that man in his state could have reached the sloop on his own steam. He could have fallen into the water, for example. But the man from Ibiza must have been so expert in things of the sea he could surely have done everything related to the trade with his eyes shut.
I stayed in El Jonquet for a while. The wind was gradually settling in and almost made me anxious to start back. It was a benign shelter. Wind blew from a funnel created by the small fjord. It rippled the water in the depths of the cove. There was a rapid succession of bluster and calm. When there was a sudden gust, the water seemed to rush as if impelled by a brief tremor, as if it were seething. The calm gave the water a pale, wan color. These variations were visible near the coast, from the shelter given by the rocks along the strand. Thirty fathoms in, the choppy sea foamed, the wind created a lively current that disappeared into the sea. The waves made for an undulating horizon beneath a cold, metallic sky.
I was thinking about how the sloop had been anchored so close to land. Given where it had been positioned, if it had a good strong rope – and everything indicated that was the case – the boat ran no danger. When it was hit by a gust, the mast swayed a little; very little, what was normal in such situations. The anchor rope remained taut. That said, the small sloop’s cabin was possibly not the ideal place to spend the night in these conditions. However, it was very likely that Senyor Verdera, when sailing in the Gulf of Lion, had experienced rougher weather.
I waited to see if the ever-wilder gusts of wind led to any movement on deck. They didn’t. As I was leaving the cove, I thought I saw a vaguely reddish light shining out of the portholes. Night was beginning to fall. Perhaps the Ibizan had lit a lamp and, in the darkness of the night, the light began to give out unsteady signs of life.
My walk back was most unpleasant. The wind gusted with insane fury across the high, unpopulated, barren wastes of S’Alqueria. Every step I took was a real effort. It was a solid, heavy, tangible wind – a wind you could almost lean on like a wall. As dusk fell, its fury mounted. It blew clouds away like bits of rag, blunted the first stars, brought trees to their knees; pounded by the wind, the twilit sea was an immense expanse of tumultuous, uncontrollable foam. The howling wind brought an elemental savagery to the air. It was a night to shut your door and stay home.
Bread and Grapes was waiting for me, hands in pockets, cowering slightly, in the shelter of the En Morell stockyard wall.
“What’s new then?” he asked, walking toward me.
“I don’t think there is anything…”
“Is it one or two people in El Jonquet?”
“Only one: Fatty Verdera.”
“Are you sure the other fellow isn’t around?”
“I’m sure, sure…I’d say almost a hundred percent.”
Bread and Grapes grinned on the sly, but I registered it.
“Time for a cigarette…” he said, handing me his tobacco pouch. “What do you reckon? You have to be daft to spend a night like this in El Jonquet! Did you actually see Fatty Verdera?”
“No, senyor. He must have been asleep in the cabin. When I left, there was a small light on inside.”
“A small light, you say. Why did Fatty Verdera need a light?”
“I thought it might be a signal left for someone he was expecting.”
“You mean the pilot? I don’t think so. If he’s not here now, he won’t come until tomorrow morning. It doesn’t make sense to be abroad at night, especially on nights like this.”
“Of course…And, by the by, what are we going to do? I was thinking that maybe it was time for us to make a move…what do you reckon?”
“I really can’t accompany you today…and believe me it’s the weather to be inside rather than out. But I’ve still got a job to finish off.”
“Very well, I’m going back to Cadaqués. Good night!”
* * *
—
The mistral howled like a rabid beast. Against the black night, the stars twinkled brightly. They seemed to have moved closer. At times, the branches of the old plane trees on Plaça de les Herbes shook so violently I thought the wind might have blown off a roof or two in Cadaqués. I watched all that from behind the windows of my tavern balcony at around half past ten just when I was going to bed.
The next morning, after lunch, the proprietor came over and declared rather anxiously: “That gentleman from Majorca, or so he told me, was going to come for lunch, but he hasn’t shown up.” I tried to tell him anything was possible in that kind of weather.
I didn’t go to El Jonquet that afternoon. The mistral continued to gust wildly. It was extremely dry. When that weather goes on for a long time, people start to get edgy. It’s as if their nerves were on a short fuse. I spent a while in the café, but there was such a nervous hue and cry in there I quickly left. I spent most of the afternoon reading in the tavern kitchen. I had no news of Bread and Grapes that whole afternoon.
The next morning, tired of being still for so long, I went to El Jonquet, though the wind was still gusting. When I arrived, I felt the wind was scraping my skin off.
I was dumbfounded: the sloop was gone. I couldn’t see any trace of its previous presence.
I found it hard to think it through coldly. In the first place one thing seemed beyond debate: the boat hadn’t left the cove of its own volition. In any case, I decided to go by Port Lligat on my way back, in case the boat had taken shelter there, which I felt was a very remote possibility.
“If the boat has disappeared,” I told myself, as I turned over what had happened, “it can be due only to two possible reasons: either because the anchor rope didn’t withstand the fierce wind or because the rope was destroyed, severed, cut or snapped – whichever word you choose to employ – in an iniquitous, criminal way. If that were the case, the wind would have swept the sloop away like a fallen leaf to be swallowed up by the sea.
No cock or hen will ever sing from its decks again.”
I pledged to return to the cove on a calm day to see whether there was any trace of the anchor or anchor rope on the seabed. Such a find would clarify what had happened.
On my way back, I walked through Port Lligat. The fishermen told me they’d seen no boats and didn’t even know there was a sloop in El Jonquet.
When I reached Cadaqués, I went to the magistrates’ court to make a statement. It was closed and wouldn’t open until the following morning. The clerk listened to me with a pen behind his ear, smoking a cigarette. Then he exclaimed indignantly: “But who could be so stupid as to anchor a sloop in El Jonquet in this weather!”
I discussed it with the tavern proprietor.
“In a nutshell,” concluded this gentleman, after a lengthy exchange, “I have lost money, a bottle of wine, half a bottle of cognac and three filter coffees…And they slander us innkeepers! What do you reckon? What a country!”
I sent a message to Senyorita Maria who lived in the house where Bread and Grapes stayed. Maria told me her guest had left a good few days ago and hadn’t said when he’d be back.
When the mistral died down, a gentle southwesterly set in. The temperature became more benign. I went to El Jonquet. After the fury unleashed over the last few days, a delightful convalescent peace reigned over the cove. The olive groves, which seemed to have molted, came back to life. The sea was still. I thought I could see a becalmed piece of cork floating in the spot once occupied by the sloop. Given it was winter and the place was so isolated, it couldn’t have been from a net or creel. I used a bamboo reed to pull the cork inland, to within two yards of the beach. It was a cork attached to a rope, one of those corks people attach to an anchor rope to indicate where it is and facilitate handling. I took my shoes off and went into the water up to my knees to get it. I held it up and saw it was attached to a hemp rope, the rope that had probably belonged to the sloop. I examined the rope and noted someone had cut it in at least two or three places, seeking out the easiest places for a knife…until that person had found the right one and severed it by applying the knife with steely strength.